Cybermancy Review

Like the first book, Webmage, the book is a quick read, but a blast throughout. It is a fun mix of cyberpunk, greek mythology, fantasy, and a bit of scifi all rolled up into a quirky ball. This of course isn’t the first time hacking/cyberpunk has been mixed with magic. The start of first book reminded me a bit of Broken Crescent, another college kid/programming skills = magic (which was also fun), but Kelly’s twists make this a lot more in depth and a lot more enjoyable. Ravirn isn’t just a hacker, magic is part of his heritage.

In book two:

To save his girlfriend’s webgoblin, Ravirn-a sorcerer with a shape-changing laptop-must brave Hell itself. Can he do it without corrupting the magical Internet-and without facing the Lord of the Dead himself?

The book begins with a hair-brained rescue attempt to rescue Shara (the webgoblin who are part familiars/part sidekicks) from Hades. As in the first book, Ravirn tends to attract problems and the situation quickly escalates past the plan and nearing out of control. As the novel progresses we start to learn a little bit more about the name he was given at the end of the first book. One of his aunts (oh his aunts are the 3 fates) took back his name Ravirn, though the one aunt renamed him Raven.

I had waited for a while to get book to in order to continue the series. I finally managed to get the book from paperbackswap.com. After finishing the second book though, I didn’t want to wait. I had received and Amazon giftcard, so ordered both Codespell and MythOS, which are the next two books in the series. (On Kelly’s site the 5th is stated to be coming out in June ’10). So I am looking forward to getting caught up with the series in the next month.

Either way, I would recommend picking up a copy. The books are fun and a nice take on the whole greek mythology story line.